Download or read book Activism in Hard Times in Central and Eastern Europe written by Patrice C. McMahon and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-06-07 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Activism in Hard Times in Central and Eastern Europe elevates the voices of civic activists from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and analyzes a wealth of information to generate new insights into how activism in the region manages to be vibrant, diverse, and consequential. Because of these countries’ unique historical trajectory, CEE activists have, in important ways, leap-frogged their counterparts in the West. Giving special attention to activists in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, the book focuses on responses to the recent “hard times” – the shrinking of public space for civil society, democratic backsliding, polarization, and Russia’s war in Ukraine. The contributors contend that CEE activists provide important lessons for others confronting similar challenges around the world. The book is well-suited for a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses, such as comparative politics, human rights, global governance, social movements, Central and East European politics, and contemporary world politics. This timely and readable book, co-created by academics and activists and written in a conversational tone, will also be of interest to the interested public and practitioners. The book encourages readers to think differently about the role of civil society and activism, as well as about how new tools and polarizing dynamics affect activism in this region. Chapters 2, 3, 6 and 8 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Download or read book Beyond NGO ization written by Steven Saxonberg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall provoked a debate on the outcomes of the transition process in the post-communist countries, including a debate on the functioning of civil society. This provided a good opportunity for researchers to collect new data and revise the discourse on collective action and the dynamics of civil society in these countries. Jacobsson and Saxonberg's collection of essays looks at social movements, and their forms of mobilization and organization, as well as action repertoires in relation to the social context, and their success or failure. The book meets an important need in the discourse on post-communist social movements by going beyond the usual discourse about the weak and non-participatory civil society in the post-communist context. This book gives a nuanced and updated view of social movements in post-communist Europe, by looking at the cases of relatively successful mobilization, by examining groups that have often been neglected in the discourse on social movements and civil society (including animal-rights groups, racist movements and non-feminist family organizations), and by giving a deeper analysis of the different strategies that civil society organizations and groups can use. Rather than expecting social movements in post-communist Europe to follow the same patterns and operate in the same fashion as in Western Europe, this volume shows that a wider view of contentious action is needed in order to understand the variety of strategies employed by collective actors operating in this context.

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of East European Politics written by Adam Fagan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of East European Politics is an authoritative overview that will help a wide readership develop an understanding of the region in all its political, economic, and social complexity. Including Central Europe, the Baltic republics, South Eastern Europe, and the Western Balkans, as well as all the countries of the former Soviet Union, it is unrivalled in breadth and depth, affording a comprehensive overview of Eastern European politics provided by leading experts in the fields of comparative politics, international relations, and public administration. Through a series of cutting-edge articles, it seeks to explain and understand patterns of Eastern European politics today. The Routledge Handbook of East European Politics will be a key reference point both for advanced-level students developing knowledge about the subject, researchers producing new material in the area, and those interested and working in the fields of East European Politics, Russian Politics, EU Politics, and more broadly in European Politics, Comparative Politics, Democratization Studies, and International Relations.

Download or read book The Class Gap in Protest Participation written by Viktoriia Muliavka and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-01 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Class Gap in Protest Participation discusses a theoretically grounded empirical analysis of the relationship between class and protest involvement across Central Eastern and Western Europe. In recent decades, mass protests have surged in both frequency and scale, yet there remains a significant variability in citizen involvement in non-electoral politics across Europe. While affluent Western democracies often witness robust civic engagement, countries of Central and Eastern Europe exhibit comparatively limited political participation. This regional gap is particularly pronounced when examining post-socialist workers who show minimal protest activity. Addressing this phenomenon, the book starts from the following question: Why do workers in Central and Eastern Europe demonstrate disproportionately lower rates of protest engagement compared to their Western European counterparts? The study reveals that the answer lies beyond conventional explanations such as legacies of communism. Cross-regional disparities in working-class protest activism are driven by differences in labor protection and left mobilization capacity. These variations stem from the historical context and the economic dependency of post-socialist countries, which create distinct conditions for workers' political engagement in the core and (semi-)periphery. This book will be of interest to political scientists and sociologists, especially researchers interested in political participation, social inequality, and post-socialist transformations.

Download or read book Barrio Democracy in Latin America written by Eduardo Canel and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The transition to democracy underway in Latin America since the 1980s has recently witnessed a resurgence of interest in experimenting with new forms of local governance emphasizing more participation by ordinary citizens. The hope is both to foster the spread of democracy and to improve equity in the distribution of resources. While participatory budgeting has been a favorite topic of many scholars studying this new phenomenon, there are many other types of ongoing experiments. In Barrio Democracy in Latin America, Eduardo Canel focuses our attention on the innovative participatory programs launched by the leftist government in Montevideo, Uruguay, in the early 1990s. Based on his extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Canel examines how local activists in three low-income neighborhoods in that city dealt with the opportunities and challenges of implementing democratic practices and building better relationships with sympathetic city officials.

Download or read book Staging Postcommunism written by Vessela S. Warner and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theatre in Eastern and Central Europe was never the same after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In the transition to a postcommunist world, “alternative theatre” found ways to grapple with political chaos, corruption, and aggressive implementation of a market economy. Three decades later, this volume is the first comprehensive examination of alternative theatre in ten former communist countries. The essays focus on companies and artists that radically changed the language and organization of theatre in the countries formerly known as the Eastern European bloc. This collection investigates the ways in which postcommunist alternative theatre negotiated and embodied change not only locally but globally as well. Contributors: Dennis Barnett, Dennis C. Beck, Violeta Decheva, Luule Epner, John Freedman, Barry Freeman, Margarita Kompelmakher, Jaak Rahesoo, Angelina Ros ̧ca, Ban ̧uta Rubess, Christopher Silsby, Andrea Tompa, S. E. Wilmer

Download or read book Mothers Families or Children Family Policy in Poland Hungary and Romania 1945 2020 written by Tomasz Inglot and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2022-11-29 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mothers, Families, or Children? is the first comparative-historical study of family policies in Poland, Hungary, and Romania from 1945 until the eve of the global pandemic in 2020. The book highlights the emergence, consolidation, and perseverance of three types of family policies based on “mother-orientation” in Poland, “family orientation” in Hungary, and “child-orientation” in Romania. It uses a new theoretical framework to identify core and contingent clusters of benefits and services in each country and trace their development across time and under different political regimes, before and after 1989. It also examines and compares policy continuity and change with special attention to institutions, ideas, and actors involved in decision making and reform. As family policies continue to evolve in the era of European Union membership and new governmental and societal actors emerge, this study reveals mechanisms that help preserve core family policy clusters while allowing reform in contingent ones in each country.

Download or read book Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War written by Sarah B. Snyder and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-20 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two of the most pressing questions facing international historians today are how and why the Cold War ended. Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War explores how, in the aftermath of the signing of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, a transnational network of activists committed to human rights in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe made the topic a central element in East-West diplomacy. As a result, human rights eventually became an important element of Cold War diplomacy and a central component of détente. Sarah B. Snyder demonstrates how this network influenced both Western and Eastern governments to pursue policies that fostered the rise of organized dissent in Eastern Europe, freedom of movement for East Germans and improved human rights practices in the Soviet Union - all factors in the end of the Cold War.

Download or read book Global Studies Russia the Eurasian Republics and Central Eastern Europe written by Minton Goldman and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book European Unions written by Roland Erne and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The wage coordination policies of the European metal and construction workers' unions and the unions' responses in the ABB-Alstom Power and Alcan-Pechiney-Algroup merger cases, Erne finds, show that the activities of labor are not confined to the national level: labor's policies have undergone Europeanization. This cross-national borrowing of tactics is itself proof of the increasing integration of European states and societies."

Download or read book Activist Citizenship in Southeast Europe written by Adam Fagan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores recent episodes of progressive citizen-led mobilisation that have spread across Southeast Europe over the past decade. These protests have allowed citizens the opportunity to challenge prevailing notions of citizenship and provided the chance to redress what is perceived to be the unjust balance of power between elites and the masses. Each contribution debunks the myth of inherently passive post-socialist populations imitating West European forms of civil society activism. Rather, we gain a deeper sense of progressive and innovative forms of activist citizenship that display essentialist and particular forms of protest in combination with the antics of global protest networks. Through richly detailed case study research, the authors illustrate that whilst the catalysts for protest in Southeast Europe were invariably familiar (the expanse of private ownership into urban public spaces; the impact of austerity), the pathology of such protests were undoubtedly indigenous in origin, reflecting the particular post-socialist/post-authoritarian trajectories of these societies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue in Europe-Asia Studies.

Download or read book The Art of Peacemaking written by István Bibó and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Istvâan Bibâo (1911-1979) was a Hungarian lawyer, political thinker, prolific essayist, and minister of state for the Hungarian national government during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. This magisterial compendium of Bibâo's essays introduces English-speaking audiences to the writings of one of the foremost theorists and psychologists of twentieth-century European politics and culture. Elegantly translated by Pâeter Pâasztor and with a scholarly introduction by Ivâan Zoltâan Dâenes, the essays in this volume address the causes and fallout of European political crises, postwar changes in the balance of power among countries, and nation-building processes"--

Download or read book Contesting Austerity and Free Trade in the EU written by Julia Rone and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-25 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book explores the diffusion of protest against austerity and free trade agreements in the wave of contention that shook the EU following the 2008 economic crisis. It discusses how protests against austerity and free trade agreements manifested a wider discontent with the constitutionalization of economic policy and the way economic decisions have been insulated from democratic debate. It also explores the differentiated politicization of these issues and the diffusion of protests across Western as well as Eastern Europe, which has often been neglected in studies of the post-crisis turmoil. Julia Rone emphasizes that far from being an automatic spontaneous process, protest diffusion is highly complex, and its success or failure can be impacted by the strategic agency and media practices of key political players involved such as bottom-up activists, as well as trade unions, political parties, NGOs, intellectuals and mainstream media. This is an important resource for media and communications students and scholars with an interest in activism, political economy, social movement studies and protest movements.

Download or read book Transnational Solidarity in Times of Crises written by Christian Lahusen and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-11-09 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access collection is devoted to an in-depth, qualitative analysis of practices of cross-national solidarity in response to the current political and social crises, from citizens’ initiatives to networks of cooperation among civil society actors. The book analyses existing informal groups at the grassroots, furthering transnational solidarity in three thematic areas: disability, unemployment and immigration. Contributions assess how civic groups respond to the various crises affecting Europe, especially the economic and refugee crises, presenting new findings from a systematic comparative study conducted in eight European countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Switzerland, and the UK). The research will be of interest to scholars, students, journalists, policy-makers and activists interested in civil society, social movements, charitable actions, altruism and solidarity, as well as European studies and the socio-economic challenges of current European crises.

Download or read book Art beyond Borders written by Jérôme Bazin and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents and analyzes artistic interactions both within the Soviet bloc and with the West between 1945 and 1989. During the Cold War the exchange of artistic ideas and products united Europe’s avant-garde in a most remarkable way. Despite the Iron Curtain and national and political borders there existed a constant flow of artists, artworks, artistic ideas and practices. The geographic borders of these exchanges have yet to be clearly defined. How were networks, centers, peripheries (local, national and international), scales, and distances constructed? How did (neo)avant-garde tendencies relate with officially sanctioned socialist realism? The literature on the art of Eastern Europe provides a great deal of factual knowledge about a vast cultural space, but mostly through the prism of stereotypes and national preoccupations. By discussing artworks, studying the writings on art, observing artistic evolution and artists’ strategies, as well as the influence of political authorities, art dealers and art critics, the essays in Art beyond Borders compose a transnational history of arts in the Soviet satellite countries in the post war period.

Download or read book An Emerging Africa in the Age of Globalisation written by Robert Mudida and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-29 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is very policy-oriented and fills an important gap in the literature on policies related specifically to the dialogue of civilisation in a globalized world. Deals with cross-cutting issues in economic integration, conflict management, human rights and sustainable development. Addresses challenges such as religious extremism, environmental problems, and political unrest.

Download or read book A More Beautiful and Terrible History written by Jeanne Theoharis and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2018-01-30 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praised by The New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; Bitch Magazine; Slate; Publishers Weekly; and more, this is “a bracing corrective to a national mythology” (New York Times) around the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement has become national legend, lauded by presidents from Reagan to Obama to Trump, as proof of the power of American democracy. This fable, featuring dreamy heroes and accidental heroines, has shuttered the movement firmly in the past, whitewashed the forces that stood in its way, and diminished its scope. And it is used perniciously in our own times to chastise present-day movements and obscure contemporary injustice. In A More Beautiful and Terrible History award-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis dissects this national myth-making, teasing apart the accepted stories to show them in a strikingly different light. We see Rosa Parks not simply as a bus lady but a lifelong criminal justice activist and radical; Martin Luther King, Jr. as not only challenging Southern sheriffs but Northern liberals, too; and Coretta Scott King not only as a “helpmate” but a lifelong economic justice and peace activist who pushed her husband’s activism in these directions. Moving from “the histories we get” to “the histories we need,” Theoharis challenges nine key aspects of the fable to reveal the diversity of people, especially women and young people, who led the movement; the work and disruption it took; the role of the media and “polite racism” in maintaining injustice; and the immense barriers and repression activists faced. Theoharis makes us reckon with the fact that far from being acceptable, passive or unified, the civil rights movement was unpopular, disruptive, and courageously persevering. Activists embraced an expansive vision of justice—which a majority of Americans opposed and which the federal government feared. By showing us the complex reality of the movement, the power of its organizing, and the beauty and scope of the vision, Theoharis proves that there was nothing natural or inevitable about the progress that occurred. A More Beautiful and Terrible History will change our historical frame, revealing the richness of our civil rights legacy, the uncomfortable mirror it holds to the nation, and the crucial work that remains to be done. Winner of the 2018 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize in Nonfiction